Courtney Love and Melissa Auf der Maur from Hole return to the studio after 24 years of separation

Is a real new Hole album on the way?

Courtney Love’s Instagram account “From Her to Eternity” recently shared a photo of a recording session with Melissa Auf der Maur, Hole’s bassist from 1994 to 1999. The singer noted that this moment was their first time in the studio together in 24 years.

“Courtney Love and @xmadmx Melissa Auf Der Maur in London, June 13, 2024, having a blast – in the studio together for the first time in 24 years,” read the caption, posted alongside five photos of the two musicians smiling and chatting next to a microphone.

Auf der Maur worked particularly with Love on Hole’s 1998 Celebrity Skin Album, which received four Grammy nominations and is the band’s only work to reach the top 10 of the Billboard 200. She then left the group and joined the Smashing Pumpkins touring band.

The grunge group “Malibu” split up in 2002 and reunited with a different line-up from 2009 to 2012. The band’s last album, Nobody’s daughterwas published in 2010.

Love and Auf der Maur have reunited on other occasions – although apparently not in the studio. In 2012, they appeared together with their Hole colleagues Eric Erlandson and Patty Schemel for a brief performance in New York City.

Six years later, Love and Auf Der Maur performed several Hole songs together during a concert in Hudson, New York.

Over the years, Love has repeatedly thought about the possibility of Hole getting back together. In an interview with Fashionshe said that there would “absolutely not be” a “real Hole reunion.”

“And you guys have to get over it. Our old manager, Peter Mensch, calls once a year and asks about a reunion: ‘Hey, I’m just going to do my thing that I do every year with you and Jimmy Page (of Led Zeppelin).’ And I’m so honored to be in that company, but it’s just not going to happen,” she told the outlet at the time.

Love continued, “We’re all really good friends and Melissa and I are particularly close – we talk every day. But Eric is kind of off the radar at the moment – I think he’s in Japan, literally becoming a monk. I’m not kidding. Melissa, Patty and I think he’s become a monk or something on that level of asceticism.”

Earlier this year, however, Love performed with Billie Joe Armstrong’s cover band The Coverups at The Garage in London – and announced to the audience that there would be a Hole reunion.

“I’ll be back in Hole later,” Love told the crowd in a fan-captured clip, threw her arms in the air and walked off the stage.